Why did the Nazis have 'God with us' on their belt buckles?

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Best Answer: The slogan "God With Us" ("Gott Mit Uns") was a holdover from the Weimar Republic days, but Hitler saw no reason to change it, because he touted his link to God every single time he could. Just read this one example, taken from a speech he gave:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited."

-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

Hitler remained a Catholic all his life, and the Catholic Church never excommunicated him.

**Edit for David: if Hitler's statements or actions were so anti-Catholic, why did the Church never excommunicate him? I stand by my statement: Hitler remained a Catholic all his life, and that was BECAUSE the church never excommunicated him.

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Why did the Nazis have &#39;God with us&#39; on their belt buckles?

Source(s): nazis 39 god 39 belt buckles: https://tr.im/DbvzT

Anonymous · 4 years ago

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The text 'Gott mit uns' does not mean 'God is really on our side' (indicative mode in grammar), but means 'God shall us help' what is imperative mode. I am not sure but guess that people in other countries wanted god's help in wars too. To come back to the question I think it's not a great difference between delusions of grandeur and invitation to FAIL.

They like many people believed what they were doing was somehow consistent with their religious beliefs and wishes of their god. Hitler's own views aside the great majority of Nazis and people in Germany were Catholic. While there is some justified debate about whether he was Catholic or some other variant of theistic belief none of his writings are consistent with Hitler being an atheist. He also persecuted atheists, shut down atheist free thought groups, took over their building and put a institute for promoting religion in its place.

Edit: Horrorfan 1989, do you actually think anything at that link you give is a credible assertion Hitler or Germans were atheists? They used swatstika shaped cookie cutters at Christmas so they must be atheists? wtf?

The Nazis tried to change Christmas into a pagan winter festival
Church property was confiscated,
Church publications were banned,
Catholic schools abolished,
Day care centres taken off the Church,
Catholic complaints against Nazi practice and ideology are abundant,
Government takeover of church charity work was implemented,
Church money collections were banned,
Discredited and public Nazi litigation against clergy was enacted for propaganda,
Clergy were thrown into jail/concentration camps,
Foreign Church mission work was made illegal,
Mandatory Hitler youth meetings were scheduled weekly on Sunday mornings clashing with mass,
Nazi publications were regularly created denouncing Catholicism including posters, Nazi newspapers and through TV,
Nazi government thugs beat up many priests and bishops,
Christian prayer was stopped in state classrooms,
Christian crosses were by law replaced by swastikas in state controlled Protestant churches
and the Nazis drew up plans to invade the Vatican and kidnap/murder the Pope.

Because their religious leaders and churches, whether Catholic, Lutheran or some other denomination assured them of God's blessing on their war against Jews, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, gypsies and other minorities including the handicapped as well as the Allies.

Only Jehovah's Witnesses (or Bible Students as they were then known in Germany) could have escaped going to the concentration camps and/or death sentences simply by signing a paper renouncing their religion. They didn't but stood by their dedication to God. Hitler was determined to wipe them out and had his churches' blessing. He's gone, there are 7,000,000+ JWs currently worldwide. Looks like "God was with the Witnesses."

If you look in pictures of Hitler you'll notice he didn't have a lieutenant as his right hand man. It was the head of the Roman Catholic church. That in a way disqualifies Roman Catholics as being true followers of Jesus. Jesus stated "my kingdom is no part of this world" and fled when people attempted to make him king.

Germany was a "Christian" nation in the sense that any nation in the midst of less-than-Christian activity is a Christian nation, to answer your second question. Its population no doubt identified itself in the main as Christian, regardless of whatever barbarous acts it committed; I'm sure using normal religious language was helpful in motivating the troops (I'm simply accepting as true the assumption of your question-- which is plausible).

That the Reich hijacked Christianity for its own purposes is hardly new or noteworthy. If you cannot think of a political party hijacking Christianity for its own purposes (and stirring up hatred and war-mongering in doing so) in the recent past (or now), you're not thinking hard enough.